While he was not a diffusive writer, his works are by no means limited in extent, as they occupy in the late erudite Laverdière's edition, six quarto volumes, containing fourteen hundred pages. In them are three large maps, delineating the whole northeastern part of the continent, executed with great care and labor by his own hand, together with numerous local drawings, picturing not only bays and harbors, Indian canoes, wigwams, and fortresses, but several battle scenes, conveying a clear idea, not possible by a mere verbal description, of the savage implements and mode of warfare. [120] His works include, likewise, a treatise on navigation, full of excellent suggestions to the practical seaman of that day, drawn from his own experience, stretching over a period of more than forty years. The Voyages of Champlain, as an authority, must always stand in the front rank. In trustworthiness, in richness and fullness of detail, they have no competitor in the field of which they treat. His observations upon the character, manners, customs, habits, and utensils of the aborigines, were made before they were modified or influenced in their mode of life by European civilization. The intercourse of the strolling fur-trader and fishermen with them was so infrequent and brief at that early period, that it made upon them little or no impression. Champlain consequently pictures the Indian in his original, primeval simplicity. This will always give to his narratives, in the eye of the historian, the ethnologist, and the antiquary, a peculiar and pre-eminent importance. The result of personal observation, eminently truthful and accurate, their testimony must in all future time be incomparably the best that can be obtained relating to the aborigines on this part of the American continent.